Patients who undergo facial and neck surgery are typically instructed to sleep facing supine, on their back, so as to avoid putting pressure, such as from contact with a conventional pillow, on their face and neck, and around the ear, where surgical incisions are typically made, and where affected tissue is located that needs to heal and recover. Similarly, it is thought that sleeping with pressure on the side of the face induces wrinkling of the skin around the eyes and other parts of the face. According, it is likewise recommended, to avoid producing wrinkles, to not sleep with the side of the face against a pillow. For some people sleeping on their back, facing up, can be difficult. Either it is uncomfortable, or they will fall asleep and roll to their side while asleep. In the case of surgical recover, this can be very undesirable as it can put stress on healing tissue, and prevents optimum healing from occurring.
This problem has been addressed to some degree but forming pressure-relieving cutouts or opening in a pillow that the user aligns with their ears when sleeping on their side. These cutouts or openings are generally circular, and sized for relieving pressure only around the ear. However, it is not uncommon for people who have surgery around their ear to also have surgery on other parts of their face, such around their eye. Simply making the openings larger does not work because a large circular cutout large enough to encompass both the ear and eye region does not provide support around other part of the face/head to be comfortable.
Therefore, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.